Conference - A Warm and Fuzzy Echo Chamber

Labour conference has finished, gladly I am home in Birmingham. I just went to the corner shop to get some bread and milk. No one asked me for a selfie. No one told me I was a legend. No one cheered me and said you are a breath of fresh air. The woman at the till smiled at me, I looked hopeful expecting her to say "you're Jess Phillips, your Twitter game is on point." Instead she said "that'll be £2.54 do you need a bag love?".

If you were at Labour Party conference, you could be mistaken for thinking I was celebrity. I'm not. In normal life at best people call me Harry's mom. When I go doorknocking on Friday in Yardley, people might know my face, but until I announce who I am, they just think I'm a slightly familiar-looking woman. If Jeremy Corbyn were to come out on my weekly doorknock I am almost certain he too would have to tell people in Sheldon or Tyseley who he was.

In my local Labour Party there are a hundred odd new members and we are really pleased to have them. More labour members is always a good thing. It is clear from the cheery inspired, proud messages I have been getting, these newly activated people are very happy and motivated. However I think I would be stretching the envelope to say that the tens of thousands of other people in Yardley are fizzing with ideas or in anyway think that there is a revolution going on. Perhaps I just need to give them time.

If I were to be straight talking and honest I'd say the last five days were probably my fave times at party conference in last five years. It is gorgeous to be adored and it was really sunny. Jeremy must feel pretty warm and fuzzy if the way I feel is anything to go by. But and it is a big but... we need to draw a line under the love-in, stop talking to each other and start talking and listening to the non revolutionary non adoring sorts. I definitely need to be taken down a peg or two, or three or four in fact. If my five days in Brighton were my everyday life, I would have a full on child star style melt down, or be demanding roomful a of white lilies and Evian water at every advice surgery.

Tomorrow I will pop to four different organisations and businesses in my constituency and get back to talking about the real stuff. I'll do a street surgery and listen to people talking about dropped kerbs not dropped bombs. I'll hear people's problems and explain who I am to people. My star will twinkle much less, but my impact will be much more.

A love-in was needed. It was nice. It was kinder politics, in the main. Jeremy has a massive mandate and it could be felt on the streets of Brighton. Our task now is beating David Cameron at the mandate game. Sadly it's a game he is winning at the moment. I'll go back to being Harry's mom, or that vaguely familiar looking woman in the queue at the Acocks Green Wilkinsons. But I know that it amongst the disinterested not the faithful where the mandate to beat all mandates lies.